Michael Moore is just like P. J. O’Rourke, only without the wit, the humour and the insight
– Tom Burroughes
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March 2nd, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 ‘Les 4 Vérités’ is a French libertarian/economic liberal magazine published weekly with 10,000 subscribers in paper format and also available online. The title comes from the French expression: «dire ces quatre vérités à quelqu’un» (“to speak home truths to someone”), in this case to a complacently statist France. Archived editions (about a month old) are available free and one can subscribe (paper or pdf) for the first month free. In the current issue: Various denunciations of Iraq; Guy Millère’s piece on ‘France’s Debt to America’ and a review of Pierre Kohler’s ‘L’imposture verte’ (the Green Scam): a scientist’s attack on the various eco-scares. One of the two things I also like on the site are the cartoons – almost every French site seems to have a cracking cartoonist: this week’s has Saddam welcoming the arrival of puppets on strings saying “At last! The return of the useful idiots!”. The other is the box which advertises the (street) demonstration of the week and offers two recommended web links. Plugged this week are a new current affairs site called ‘Choc-info’ and a pompously witty ‘libertarian bureaucrat’ with the outlandish name, even in French of Aristophane Triboulet. I now have over 120 links for French libertarian groups, publications, blogs and online forums. ‘Les 4 Vérités’ may not have the most polished web site, but it provides the free market view unashamedly, in a country that needs it badly. March 2nd, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Will this age of wickedness never end? First, some Danish quack tries to convince us that the world is not about to end and now some Swedish ‘reactionaries’ try to debunk recycling:
WHAT??!! How dare they? Don’t they realise how many years of activism are at stake?
Probably just a bunch of nazi zionist illuminatis in the pocket of Donald Rumsfeld.
Do the words of John Lennon mean nothing to you, you baby-eating monster?
See, it’s all really about OIL!!!.
What do these people know about credibility? Everybody knows that the credibility of enviro-mentalism is maintained by clambering all over public monuments unfurling stupid banners and shilling for marxist despots.
Yes, quite right. How can one possibly tolerate anything ‘regressive’ whilst trying to drag us all back into the Stone Age? These Swedes are nothing but terrorists. March 2nd, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
They set forth boldly into the world with love in the hearts and the zeal of righeousness in their eyes, blazing with their vision for a better world and a finer day when we would all join hands in common humanity. They were bright, shining, fearless emissaries of truth and justice, striding into the lion’s den as an example to the rest of mankind that there is a better way. No bullet could graze them, no missile could dent them and no oil-grabbing cowboys were going to deflect them from saving the innocent Iraqis from their merciless predations of an unjust war!! Only, now they’re coming home because…um..well, they got a bit frightened:
So that’s that. They’ve had some sun on their faces, seen the sights, tried all the local dishes and now it’s back to tedious old Britain where they can bore everyone with their holiday snaps (“Look, this is Tarquin and me draping ourselves over a Scud missile launcher”). Next year: North Korea!
What, no baby-milk factories??!! They wuz tricked! They have been denied their rightful glory. ‘Peace tourist’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it. March 2nd, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
First they ban any effective tool of defending yourself against rape, then they prosecute you if you actually defend yourself, now they are prosecuting people for using the most effective method of escaping rape: “Melissa O’Donnell claimed the unidentified man attacked her as she slept in the spare room of his home in Inverness and she fled by car despite drinking that night.” “She added: “About 30 minutes later he burst into the room and made a lunge for me. He started shouting and calling me names such as slut. He said I was trying it on with his friends. When he eventually left the room she grabbed her clothes and ran out, only to be grabbed again. Once more, she struggled free and managed to get out of the flat and run to her car, driving off with the door still open and David running after her. After driving about 400 metres she felt she had escaped her attacker and stopped. However, he [the judge] conceded there were “extreme special reasons” why she drove while over the limit, and that was why he decided to restrict the sentence to a £350 ($560) fine and eight penalty points.” That is £1408.11 and 32 penalty points per mile. Although I do as a general rule disapprove of people driving after drinking, the fact is this women did not do any harm to anyone. In this case it is utterly ridiculous to prosecute the woman for driving after drinking given the circumstances. Exactly how else would she have been able to escape a 6’3″ man? Either the court must reject her story, convict her and punish her fully… or they must accept her account of events that night and set aside the matter of her drinking and driving as not just trivial but fully justified in the circumstances. And yet, by not banning her from driving upon conviction (for she never denied being over the legal limit), the Scottish state is saying it does indeed accept her version of events… and so the court has in effect prosecuted and convicted her for escaping from being raped. Della March 2nd, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
On tonight’s TV show ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ a contestant was asked “Who in 2002 became known as ‘The Quiet Man’ of British Politics?”
She had no idea. She used her 50/50 lifeline which left her with Baker and Duncan Smith. She slightly guessed the latter but felt she needed to call her father. He promptly said: “IDS”. Last year a programme on the same game show asked a father and son who the leader of the Conservative Party was. The programme was recorded the day after Ian Duncan Smith made his first speech as leader of the Conservative Party at the Party Conference. The son said “I haven’t a clue”, the father thought it might be Kenneth Clarke. They asked the audience. A minority knew the answer. Finally they called a friend and got the correct response, although on that occasion the friend wasn’t so sure. 
One of these blokes is the leader of the Conservative Party… apparently. March 1st, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
An article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph Sports section speculates as to why the bid for the Olympic Games in London for 2012 might fail. Apparently the expected losses for hosting the games will be a massive £2,600 millions. However, as no one has actually published what the toal budget would be, I can only assume that normal public sector project costs will apply: i.e. the original sum multiplied by ten. It is easy to see why the government is apparently unconvinced by the urgency of commiting to such a scheme. My critics may argue that this sum of money spent on promoting the Olympic Games will do a lot less harm than if allocated to almost any other public programme. This is true. One shudders at the thought of what dregs passing themselves off as doctors would be employed in state hospitals if this sort of money got awarded the National Health Service. Oh dear, I just realised, the NHS has been given that extra sum over the next two years. Perhaps we should have persuaded the government to spend vast amounts of money on hopeless attempts to bring the football World Cup to Staines, or the Winter Olympics to Blackpool, or even finance half a dozen Americas Cup challenges. March 1st, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Cor, Gnasher, that’s a relief! Alert status down to Bikini Off or whatever they call it. The good guys are so far ahead in the War on Terror that they have time to spare to ban the Dandy. March 1st, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
The government announced today that it is changing its emblem to a condom because it more clearly reflects the government’s political stance. A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks and gives you a sense of security while you are actually being screwed. Damn, it just doesn’t get more accurate than that!  March 1st, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Well, it seems to have been a slow day here on Samizdata. Me, I’ve been putting up CD shelves and then preparing for one of my Friday evenings, so I’ve not had much time to samizdatise. But I now have time to get a link to this up before midnight, this being a strange sort of variable diagram where a bunch of cartoon economists watch what happens. That’s a bad explanation I realise. When this diagram gets taken down and historians of this blog wonder what I was talking about, they’ll just have to carry on wondering. I don’t know what it signifies, but I find it oddly entertaining. Perhaps it refers to the tendency of economists to be rather too attentive towards merely numerical data, and to neglect more important but less measurable phenomena. So, not Austrian economists then. My thanks to the deeply strange people at B3TA for the link to this. February 28th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Well, if you have a lefty friend who you think should be taken to sample what life under socialism is really like, then this “tourist attraction” in former East Germany is just the ticket. Who said the Germans don’t have a sense of humour? February 28th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Samizdata has in the past said some uncomplimentary things here and here about Hollywood actor and Republican Party supporter Bruce Willis, so maybe he is trying to redeem himself by laying into the various celebrities who have been opposing the case for war these last few weeks. It turns out that Willis volunteered to serve in the military, but was turned down due to his age. There is a particularly good, but rude quote from his first Die Hard movie that springs to mind when I imagine what the white-vested Willis would say if he ever met the moustached villain of Iraq. Movie-goers will know the expression I mean. (Heh-heh). On a totally different note about movies, I wonder how many readers have seen the Roman Polanski film, The Pianist? I saw it the other evening and although a harrowing film, contained some beautifully poignant moments as well. The terrible plight of Poland’s Jews is all too stark a reminder of the cost of appeasing evil. And the lessons of that time for our own are equally only too apparent. I urge those who haven’t to see this film. February 28th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
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